Herman, you have been staring at those three monitors since four in the morning. I can tell because the blue light is practically etched into your retinas. You look like you are trying to decrypt the entire internet at once. I brought you a second liter of coffee, but honestly, I think your blood is already seventy percent caffeine and thirty percent pure adrenaline at this point.
Herman Poppleberry, at your service, and yes, I have been up. It is not every day the world shifts on its axis, Corn. We are witnessing something that people will be studying in military academies for the next century. My eyes are fine, mostly. It is the data that is dizzying. Today’s prompt from Daniel is about Operation Roaring Lion, and it really cuts to the heart of what we have been watching unfold since the first reports broke at zero-three-hundred hours. He wants us to look past the headlines and the explosions and talk about the actual mechanics of the planning and the preparation that led to this morning. He specifically asked how a machine of this size even begins to move without the whole world hearing the gears grinding years in advance.
It is a massive question because this is not just a localized skirmish or a quick retaliatory strike. We are talking about a joint United States and Israeli operation aimed at the entirety of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure and, as the reports from the Pentagon and the Kirya are suggesting, a broader goal of regime change. That is a gargantuan undertaking. Daniel specifically mentioned compartmentalization and the behind the scenes strategy. It makes me wonder, how many years of work are actually coming to a head right now? Because you do not just "decide" to do this on a Tuesday.
Years is exactly the right timeframe. You do not just wake up and decide to take on a sophisticated integrated air defense system like Iran’s. The planning for Operation Roaring Lion likely started in earnest years ago, probably during the height of the tensions in twenty-twenty-four, with constant iterations. Think of it like a massive, multi-dimensional puzzle where the pieces are constantly moving. You have the technical side, the logistical side, the intelligence side, and the political side, all needing to align perfectly before that first jet even leaves the tarmac. We are talking about thousands of pages of "Operation Plans," or O-PLANS, that are constantly being updated with every new satellite photo and every intercepted phone call.
And the secrecy must be absolute. I mean, we are talking about two different countries, two different military cultures, and thousands of personnel. How do you keep something of this scale from leaking? We have seen the buildup in the region, which we talked about in episode eight hundred and thirty-one, but the actual "Go" signal and the specific targets... that is a different level of security. How do you stop a random sergeant in South Carolina or a technician in Haifa from posting something on social media that ruins the whole element of surprise?
That is where compartmentalization becomes the most important tool in the shed. In a mission like this, you have thousands of people involved, but maybe only a few dozen actually know the whole picture. Everyone else is working in a silo. It is the "Manhattan Project" model. A technician at an airbase in Nevada might be preparing a specific type of electronic warfare pod, but they do not know it is for a strike on a specific facility in Iran. They just know they have a deadline and a technical specification. They are told it is for a "Central Command Exercise" or a "Technology Validation Phase." They are given a piece of the puzzle that looks like a cloud, and they have no idea it is part of a picture of a storm.
So, it is like a giant machine where every cog is only aware of the teeth it is touching, but not the overall function of the device? That sounds incredibly lonely for the people involved, but I guess it is the only way to prevent a catastrophic intelligence leak.
Precisely. And in the context of joint operations between the United States and Israel, that compartmentalization gets even more complex. You have to share enough information to be effective but keep enough back to protect your own sources and methods. We saw some of that tension in episode seven hundred and thirty-eight when we discussed the Mossad sabotage operations. There is a "need to know" basis that is strictly enforced. If you are a pilot, you might only get your final target coordinates and the "Roaring Lion" mission name hours before take-off. Up until that point, you were just flying "Training Route Alpha" for the hundredth time.
Let us talk about the "Long Alert" we covered in episode six hundred and ninety-one. We have seen a massive military buildup in the Middle East over the last few months. Carriers moving into position, bombers being rotated through regional bases in Qatar and Jordan. To the average observer, it looks like a threat, but how do the planners use that visibility to their advantage? Because it is hard to hide a carrier strike group.
It is a concept called "normalization through repetition." If you fly B-fifty-two bombers into the region once, everyone panics. If you do it every three weeks for a year, it becomes part of the background noise. The planners are essentially hiding the actual attack in the "noise" of routine movements. They are training the Iranian sensors and intelligence officers to see these movements as "just another exercise" or "just another show of force." It is psychological warfare on a grand scale. You want the enemy to see the buildup and think, "Oh, the Americans are saber-rattling again," right up until the moment the sabers actually swing.
So, the very thing that signals an attack is used to lull the target into a sense of routine? That is incredibly risky, but I suppose it is the only way to move that much hardware without it being a neon sign saying "We are attacking tomorrow." It is like the boy who cried wolf, but the boy is a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
It is the ultimate shell game. You move the pieces, you move them back, you increase the tempo, you decrease it. You are looking for that moment where the adversary’s guard drops just a fraction. But behind that "noise," the real preparation is happening in the shadows. We are talking about the creation of "Targeting Packets." Every single bunker, every centrifuge hall, every command-and-control node has a digital folder that is updated in real-time with satellite imagery, signals intelligence, and even human intelligence from agents on the ground. For Operation Roaring Lion, they would have mapped out the exact thickness of the concrete at the Fordow enrichment plant and calculated the precise angle a bunker-buster needs to hit to ensure total destruction.
I imagine the role of the "Red Cell" or the "Red Team" is huge here. These are the people whose entire job is to think like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, right? They are trying to find the holes in the American and Israeli plan. I remember you saying once that a good Red Team is the most annoying group of people in the military.
They are the professional skeptics. During the planning for Roaring Lion, you would have a team of the brightest minds in the Pentagon and the IDF sitting in a room, and their only goal is to ruin the mission. They say, "Okay, you think your stealth jets can bypass this radar? Well, what if the Iranians have deployed this specific mobile sensor that we did not account for?" Or, "What if the first wave fails to take out the communications hub?" They run thousands of simulations. They play the "What If" game until they have exhausted every possible failure point. They are the ones who forced the planners to add a third and fourth layer of redundancy to the refueling plan or the search and rescue protocols.
And those simulations are not just on computers anymore, are they? I have read about these "Digital Twins" where they basically have a virtual version of the entire country they are targeting.
No, they are incredibly sophisticated. We are talking about digital twins of the entire Iranian air defense network. They use artificial intelligence to predict how the Iranian commanders will react. If we strike point A, do they move their mobile missiles to point B or point C? The planners are not just planning the first strike; they are planning the second, third, and tenth moves in a high-stakes game of chess. They use machine learning to analyze years of Iranian military exercises to find patterns in how their leadership makes decisions under stress. It is like having a playbook for the other team’s brain.
It makes me think of the logistics. Daniel’s prompt mentions the size of the mission. When you are aiming for something as ambitious as regime change, you are not just dropping bombs. You have to think about the aftermath, the "Day After." How much of the planning is dedicated to what happens when the smoke clears? Because that seems like the part where things usually go sideways.
In a mission of this magnitude, probably fifty percent of the planning is about the kinetic strike and the other fifty percent is about the stability or the transition. If the goal is truly regime change, you have to identify which parts of the existing infrastructure you want to keep and which you need to dismantle. You are looking at the "human terrain." Who are the local leaders? How do you prevent a total vacuum of power that leads to chaos? It is why you see such a heavy emphasis on the joint nature of this. The United States brings the massive "over-the-horizon" power, while Israel brings the deep, granular intelligence and regional expertise. They have likely been in contact with opposition groups for years, vetting potential leaders who could step in if the current government collapses.
I want to go back to the technical side of the preparation. We talked in episode six hundred and twenty-three about what happens when war is imminent, the "Maximum Alert" status. For the engineers and the cyber warfare specialists, what does the lead-up to today look like? Because I assume they were not just sitting around waiting for the jets to take off.
Oh, it is intense. For the cyber teams, the preparation for Roaring Lion likely started years ago with the quiet "planting of seeds." You are not just looking for a way in; you are looking for ways to stay in without being detected. You want to be able to "blind" the enemy at the exact moment the jets cross the border. Remember how we talked about the sabotage of air defenses in episode seven hundred and thirty-eight? That is not something you do on the fly. You have to have the malware pre-positioned, waiting for a "trigger" signal. They have been mapping the Iranian power grid, their water systems, and their military intranets for a decade.
So, while the physical jets are taking off, there is a whole invisible battle happening in the electromagnetic spectrum? It is like a digital ghost army.
It is called Cyber-Electromagnetic Activities, or CEMA. You are jamming their radios, you are spoofing their radar screens so they see hundreds of "ghost" planes, or you are making their own missiles think their friends are enemies. The preparation for that requires a deep understanding of every single piece of technology the Iranians use. You have to have captured their equipment, reverse-engineered it, and found the vulnerabilities. The Israelis are world-class at this. They have likely spent years buying Iranian-spec hardware on the black market just to take it apart in a lab in Tel Aviv.
It is fascinating and terrifying at the same time. The level of detail is mind-boggling. I mean, even the weather planning must be incredible. You cannot just fly through a sandstorm if you are trying to hit a target with sub-meter precision. I remember you mentioning that even the moon phase matters.
They have dedicated meteorological units that have been studying the atmospheric conditions over the Iranian plateau for decades. They know exactly how the dust and the heat shimmer will affect laser-guided munitions. They are looking for the perfect "window" where the moon is at the right angle for night vision and the winds are favorable for refueling tankers. For Operation Roaring Lion, they would have analyzed thirty years of weather patterns to pick this specific week in late February. They want clear skies over the targets but maybe some cloud cover over the ingress routes to help hide the heat signatures of the planes.
And let us not forget the people. The pilots, the special operators. How do you train for a mission this specific without giving it away? Do you build mock-ups of the targets? I remember seeing those photos of the bin Laden compound replica.
Historically, yes. Think back to the raid on the Osirak reactor or even the bin Laden raid. The military builds full-scale replicas of the target facilities in remote deserts—places like the Negev or the Nevada Test and Training Range. They fly the mission profiles over and over again until the pilots can do it in their sleep. They practice the low-altitude ingress, the pop-up maneuvers, the emergency egress. But again, compartmentalization! The pilots might be told they are training for a "generic" hardened target in a "generic" desert environment, even if the layout looks suspiciously like a certain facility near Qom. They are trained to hit a specific door or a specific vent without being told exactly what is inside that door.
It is that layer of "plausible deniability" even within the military itself. If a pilot gets captured during a training exercise or talks too much at a bar, they do not actually have the "keys to the kingdom." They only have their specific piece of the puzzle. It protects the mission and, in a way, it protects them.
Right. And then there is the coordination between the two nations. This is where it gets really tricky. You have different languages, different radio systems, different "rules of engagement." The preparation involves what they call "Interoperability Exercises." They have to make sure the Israeli F-thirty-fives can talk to the American AWACS planes without any lag or interference. They use encrypted data links like Link sixteen, but even then, you have to be sure the protocols are identical. They have been practicing this for years in exercises like "Juniper Oak." Those were not just for show; they were the dress rehearsals for today.
I am curious about the "Go/No-Go" criteria. Who makes that final call? Is it a joint room with a big red button, or is it more of a cascading series of approvals? Because that seems like the most stressful moment in human history.
It is a bit of both. You have the political leaders—the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel—who give the strategic "Go." But on the operational level, there is a "Director of the Air Component" who is watching the weather, the technical readiness, and the intelligence feeds. If a single critical piece is missing—say, a refueling tanker has a mechanical issue or a specific Iranian radar site suddenly goes active in an unexpected way—they might "scrub" or delay the mission. The discipline required to wait for the perfect moment is just as important as the courage to strike. There are hundreds of "No-Go" criteria that can stop the clock at T-minus one minute.
It really highlights how much of modern warfare is won or lost before the first shot is even fired. If your planning is flawed, if your compartmentalization is leaky, or if your simulations are too optimistic, the mission fails before it starts. It is a battle of spreadsheets and satellite photos before it is a battle of missiles.
And that is why Operation Roaring Lion feels so different. The sheer scale and the precision we are seeing today suggest that the preparation was exhaustive. They were not just looking for a "win"; they were looking for a "decisive shift." They wanted to remove the nuclear threat and the regime that supports it in one fell swoop. That requires a level of integration between intelligence and kinetic force that we have rarely seen in history. It is the culmination of what we call "Multi-Domain Operations"—land, sea, air, space, and cyber all hitting at once.
It is a sobering thought, really. When you think about the thousands of people who have been living this mission in secret for years. The families who did not know where their spouses were going, the engineers working on "black projects" in windowless buildings. It is a massive human effort hidden behind the curtain. I wonder about the psychological toll on the planners themselves, living with this secret for half a decade.
It really is. And the implications are going to ripple out for decades. We are not just talking about the Middle East; we are talking about the global balance of power. If this operation succeeds in its broader goals, it changes the calculus for every other nation with nuclear ambitions. But the risk of miscalculation is always there. No plan, no matter how well-compartmentalized or simulated, survives first contact with the enemy perfectly. We call it "The Friction of War."
That is the "Fog of War" that Clausewitz talked about. You can have all the data in the world, but once the lead starts flying, things get messy. I wonder how much of the planning was dedicated to "what if things go wrong?" Like, what if the regime does not collapse? What if they retaliate against targets in Europe or the US?
A huge portion. They call it "Contingency Planning." What if a plane is shot down? You have Combat Search and Rescue teams on high alert, pre-positioned in clandestine locations. What if the Iranians launch a counter-strike with ballistic missiles? You have the joint air defense alliance we talked about in episode six hundred and ninety-six, with Aegis destroyers and Arrow batteries ready to intercept. Every "action" has a planned "reaction" and a "counter-reaction." They have likely mapped out fifty different "branch plans" for how the first forty-eight hours could go.
It is like a nested loop of "if-then" statements. If the enemy does X, we do Y. If Y fails, we do Z. It is the ultimate expression of human engineering applied to the most chaotic environment possible. It is almost like they are trying to engineer the chaos out of the war, even though we know that is impossible.
And that brings us back to Daniel’s point about the "behind the scenes" look. We see the flashes on the news, but the real story is in the basement of the Pentagon, in the bunkers under Tel Aviv, and in the quiet offices of intelligence analysts who have been staring at the same satellite photos for five years. They know every crack in the concrete of those nuclear facilities. They know the shift changes of the guards. They know which commanders are likely to defect and which will fight to the death. That is the level of preparation we are talking about. It is an intimacy with the target that is almost uncomfortable.
It is a level of intimacy that is almost uncomfortable to think about. You know your enemy better than they know themselves in some ways. You know their weaknesses, their fears, and their routine.
You have to. In modern warfare, information is the most lethal weapon. The bombs are just the delivery mechanism for the intelligence. If you hit the wrong building, or if you hit it at the wrong time, you have wasted millions of dollars and risked lives for nothing. Operation Roaring Lion is the culmination of an information war that has been raging for a decade. The physical strikes are just the final chapter of a very long book.
So, looking ahead, what are the takeaways for our listeners who are trying to make sense of this? What should they be looking for in the coming days as more information about the "preparation" phase inevitably leaks out? Because we know the "after-action reports" will eventually start to surface.
First, look for the "enablers." Watch for reports on electronic warfare, cyber attacks, and special operations that happened before the main strikes. Those are the clues to how the path was cleared. Second, pay attention to the "Joint" nature of the reports. How much was the US doing versus Israel? That tells you a lot about the diplomatic and strategic preparation. And third, watch the reaction of the Iranian "street" and the secondary layers of the military. That will tell you how well the "regime change" part of the plan was researched. If the military stands down, the planners did their homework on the human terrain.
It is going to be a long few weeks of analysis. I am sure we will be coming back to this topic as the details emerge. It is just... the scale of it is hard to wrap your head around. We are talking about the largest military operation of the twenty-twenties so far.
It really is. We are seeing the "Big Game" being played at the highest level. And while it is fascinating from a technical and strategic perspective, we have to remember the human cost on all sides. This is not a simulation anymore; it is reality. The planners have done their job, and now it is in the hands of the people on the ground.
It is a stark reminder of the world we live in. Herman, I think you have given us a lot to chew on. The idea of the "Normalization of Alert" and the deep compartmentalization really changes how I look at those news clips of carriers moving around. It is not just a "show of force"; it is a "shroud for the strike." It makes you wonder what else is being prepared right now that we are just seeing as "routine."
It is the art of being invisible while standing in the middle of the room. It is the most dangerous kind of magic trick.
Well, I think that is a good place to start wrapping things up for today. This has been a heavy one, but an important one. We are all trying to understand the "why" and the "how" behind these massive events. Daniel, thank you for the prompt. It really forced us to look at the architecture of the event rather than just the event itself.
And if you want to dive deeper into some of the groundwork we have discussed, I really recommend going back and listening to episode seven hundred and thirty-eight on the Mossad sabotage operations. It gives you a great sense of the "pre-kinetic" phase of this conflict. It is the prequel to everything we are seeing today.
Definitely. And hey, if you are finding these deep dives helpful, we would really appreciate it if you could leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It genuinely helps the show reach more people who are looking for this kind of analysis. We are trying to build a community of people who want to look under the hood of world events.
It really does. We love seeing the community grow and hearing your thoughts. Your reviews help us fine-tune the show and keep the coffee flowing in the booth.
You can find all of our past episodes, including the ones we mentioned today like episode six hundred and ninety-one and eight hundred and thirty-one, at myweirdprompts.com. We have a full archive there, plus a contact form if you want to send us your own prompts. You can also reach us directly at show at myweirdprompts.com. We read every single one, even if we cannot get to them all on air.
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It certainly does. Well, Corn, I think I need to get back to those monitors. There is a lot more data coming in from the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. The second wave of reports is just starting to hit the wires.
Just... maybe blink once or twice, Herman. For your health. And maybe eat something that isn't a protein bar.
I will try. No promises. The world is moving too fast to blink right now.
Thanks for listening to My Weird Prompts. We will be back soon with more analysis and, of course, more prompts from Daniel and the rest of you.
Until next time, stay curious and keep digging. The truth is usually buried under a few layers of compartmentalization.
Goodbye, everyone!
Goodbye!
